For months DES staff have been told to reduce their PC and Network shared files to a fraction of their current ones. Why? To prepare for migration to DII. A lot of work for people with real support jobs to do and sure knowledge that their work will be constrained by storage limitations. Anyway, what do they know; the professionals have it in hand.

"The failures are across the range. They can include things like the system being too slow, it actually not working, things that have been promised haven't materialised actually meaning that it's very difficult to do their job." - Mark Serwotka, General Secretary PCS Union

Abbey Wood is the MoD centre for purchasing all the armed forces supplies, from toilet rolls to tanks. It is the first major defence site to get DII, and staff here are not happy.

We've seen internal emails that complain that DII has meant they've gone for several weeks unable to email their suppliers; of their fears that if equipment was to fail on operations they'd be unable to respond.

That from the team supporting the Army's new Guided Multiple-Launch Rocket System, shortly after it had first been fired in anger in July in Afghanistan. DII, they said, was not fit for purpose.

Another email says bluntly, DII is nothing short of "an unmitigated disaster".

In response, senior managers at Abbey Wood admitted the problems had meant the roll-out had almost stopped on a number of occasions.

Even the most senior officer in charge of military supplies has conceded DII has experienced severe difficulties.

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The solution is in hand, though.

Just last month, in an Open Letter to his project team leaders, General Sir Kevin O'Donoghue wrote: "As with all major IT roll-outs we have experienced major problems"